Just Like Us
by rebecca-in-blue
Summary: "How could Olive know that? She doesn't even know how weird their family is." Dwayne reads a book other than Nietzsche and takes Olive trick-or-treating on Halloween.


I really enjoyed writing this story and bringing these two fandoms together. This is my entry for the Halloween Writing Challenge at Writers Anonymous.

* * *

"But Mom, why can't I go trick-or-treating by myself?" Olive whined for the second time. Whining about anything was so unlike her that Dwayne wouldn't have believed it if he wasn't seeing it for himself. It was an early October evening, and their family was eating dinner.

"Honey, you aren't old enough to go trick-or-treating by yourself," Sheryl said firmly. "Me or your dad or your Uncle Frank is going with you."

"We could even walk a few feet behind you, Olive," Frank suggested, leaning towards her. "So it would seem like you were trick-or-treating by yourself."

But Olive just scowled and sulked down in her chair, with a stubbornness that made Dwayne strangely proud. She was usually such an easygoing kid, rolling with whatever punches their family or life threw at her. It was almost refreshing to see her acting a little like him.

"No," Olive refused. "If I have to go trick-or-treating with a grown-up like a _baby_ , then I don't want to go at all!"

Out of habit, Dwayne pulled his notepad from his pocket and flipped it open. He had written as far as _I could t_ before he found his voice again.

"I could take you trick-or-treating," he said, and everyone turned in his direction. He wasn't completely mute anymore, but he still spoke so rarely that it was always a surprise.

"You could? Really?" Olive sat up straight in her chair again, looking pleased. She had no idea that all the other kids in high school thought he was a weirdo loser. How could she? Olive didn't even realize how strange their family was. Dwayne was her big brother, and that made him cool in her eyes, now matter how moody or mute he was. "Mom, can I go trick-or-treating with Dwayne?"

"Of course, honey." Sheryl smiled at her, then at Dwayne. "That's very sweet of you, Dwayne."

He just shook his shaggy bangs over his eyes and stared out the window.

Richard asked Olive what her Halloween costume would be this year, but Olive hadn't decided yet.

Dwayne looked away from the window and turned to face her. "I have an idea."

* * *

Tonight was Frank's turn to wash the dishes, so Dwayne had their room to himself after dinner. He called Olive in and showed her the book.

" _The Catcher in the Rye_ ," she read. "Is this your idea?" Dwayne nodded, and Olive sat on the edge of his bed and flipped through the book, looking for pictures. "What's it about?"

For some reason, talking to Olive was easier than talking to most people. "It's about this guy, Holden Caulfield, a few years older than me, and he has a little sister named Phoebe. They're just like us."

"Really? How are they just like us?"

 _Because he's a loser who keeps getting kicked out of schools, and she's so cute it's almost nauseating and everyone loves her,_ Dwayne thought. But he shrugged and said only, "They just are."

He opened the book to its final pages, to a scene that he knew Olive would like. "There's this part where he takes her to ride a carousel," he said, pointing out the paragraph. "See, read that."

"She ran and bought her ticket and got back on the carousel just in time," Olive began. Dwayne closed his eyes and listened to her slow, high voice as she read about Holden, in his red hunting hat, sitting on the Central Park bench watching Phoebe, in her blue coat, ride the carousel. " _I damn near started bawling, I felt so happy_." When Dwayne first read that, he was surprised to recognize the same emotions that he'd felt when Olive danced at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant – when she _kept_ dancing, even as the host tried to drag her offstage.

But just then, Richard happened to pass by his room. "Dwayne, what are you letting her read?" he shouted when he saw _The Catcher in the Rye_ in Olive's hands. "That book is _not_ appropriate for her!"

Down the hall, Sheryl and Frank overheard and tried to come to his defense. "Richard, he's spending time with Olive," Sheryl said, and Frank put in, "It's never too early to introduce children to great literature. I read a study that said..." Pretty soon, all three adults were arguing again. Olive ducked her head and scurried out of his room, looking guilty. Dwayne shut the door behind her, lied down on the floor, and alternated between sit-ups and pushups until it was time to go to sleep.

* * *

The next Saturday, Dwayne and Olive rode their bikes to a thrift store near the house, in search of a blue coat and a red hunting hat.

"I'll look for the hat, okay?" Olive told him. "And you look for the coat." Dwayne just nodded, a bit more accepting now, even though he still didn't understand how nobody realized sooner that he was color-blind. _Only his family_. When they got back from California, he'd gone to a special eye doctor, who diagnosed him with protanopia, a complete absence of red, pink, and purple. In the thrift store, he shuffled through the rack of children's coats, vaguely wondering what colors he wasn't seeing.

Autumn in New Mexico was too hot for a proper coat, so he picked out a thin blue windbreaker about Olive's size. As he pulled it off the rack, she hurried over to him, calling his name. "Dwayne, look, I found it! I found a red hunting hat, just like Holden's, see?" Dwayne could see the hat, but not the red; Olive held it out to him, and it was the same swampy shade of green as stop signs and fire hydrants. "Is that my coat?" she asked, and he nodded.

Out of habit, he pointed rather than spoke - to the windbreaker, then to Olive's eyes behind her Coke-bottle glasses. She knew what he meant. "Hey, you're right," she said, admiringly, "it matches my eyes. You can see blue so good, you don't even need to see all those other colors."

Dwayne's mind lingered on that comment while they rode their bikes home. Olive didn't see how weird their family was, or what a loser he was, but she could see colors that Dwayne couldn't. Was it a fair trade?

* * *

On Halloween night, when Dwayne came into the living room with the hat on his head and a candy cigarette in his mouth, Olive balked. "No! No way!" she scolded, grabbing it from between his lips. "Smoking is bad for you - _really_ bad! We learned all about it in health class!"

Dwayne yanked the cigarette back from her and held it too high for her to reach. He couldn't write with only one hand free, so he found his voice again. "It's a _fake_ cigarette, Olive," he said. "It isn't _real_. It's just for me to get into character. Holden smokes a lot in the book. People didn't know how bad it was back then. I'm not really smoking anything, okay?" He shoved the cigarette back in his mouth, suddenly uncomfortable. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spoken so much at once.

Olive looked slightly placated. "Well, you better never smoke for real. Promise you'll never smoke for real?" she whined. "Promise?" Dwayne rolled his eyes, annoyed, but then she stomped her foot and insisted, "Dwayne, _promise_! I don't want _you_ to die, too!" and all his annoyance vanished.

"Okay, I promise."

Sheryl came into the room with her camera. She wanted to take a picture of them before they left, but she blinked, puzzled, when she saw their costumes. They were wearing the red hat and blue windbreaker with ordinary clothes. But before she could ask who they were supposed to be, Frank grinned and snapped his fingers.

"Hey, Holden and Phoebe, right? From _The Catcher in the Rye_?"

"Yeah," Olive said, surprised. "How'd you know?" Dwayne almost laughed. She probably thought it was some little-known book that only her brother had ever read.

"Are you kidding?" their uncle asked. "I loved that book when I was Dwayne's age. Still do. Sheryl, can I a get a copy of that picture? I'll show it to my students. You two are probably the same age difference as Holden and Phoebe, too. What great costumes."

Dwayne almost smiled as Sheryl took their picture, and then he and Olive set off for trick-or-treating. "Have fun and be careful!" their mother's voice called after them as they ventured into the dark, windy night. Olive was excited and energized, and they walked a few blocks in each direction, stopping and knocking at every house with a porch light on. A few more adults recognized them as Holden and Phoebe - such a change from the typical skeletons and zombies - and made the same comment as their uncle, "I loved that book when I was your age." One man even got his camera and took a picture of them; he said he would keep it in his copy of the book. Between houses, the night breeze scattered dry leaves across the sidewalks, and groups of other excited kids in costumes waved as they passed by. Dwayne enjoyed it more than he thought he would.

As they pounded the pavement between two houses, Olive asked through a mouthful of bubblegum, "What does that mean, anyway? _The Catcher in the Rye_?"

Dwayne pulled his hunting hat down lower like Holden always did. "Uh, it's sort of a daydream that Holden has. He imagines a bunch of kids playing in a field of rye - "

"What's rye?"

"It's a kind of wheat. He imagines a bunch of kids playing in a field of rye near a cliff, and his job is to stand at the edge of the cliff and make sure none of the kids get too close."

In the book, Holden had only ever spoken to Phoebe about his fantasy of being the catcher in the rye. "I know it's crazy," he'd said, "but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

But Olive didn't find it crazy. She just smacked her bubblegum and said, "Oh, okay," as if it was completely normal. _Only his family_.

Dwayne thought back to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, and how he had tried to stop Olive from going onstage. He'd wanted to be the catcher in the rye, too. He'd seen his sister playing in her little field of rye, thinking that she had a chance at winning, and he didn't want her falling off that steep, familiar cliff of humiliation. "I don't want these people judging Olive," he'd whispered to Sheryl. "They're gonna laugh at her! Fuck them!" But Olive had performed anyway, and even when the audience booed and the host tried to drag her offstage, she didn't care. She just kept dancing.

She didn't need him to catch her at all. She jumped off that cliff and learned to fly.

Later that evening, as it was drawing close to the curfew that Sheryl had set, Olive's energy was flagging, and her plastic jack-o-lantern bucket was nearly filled with candy. Dwayne had a bucket too, but his was filled with supplies - a flashlight, extra batteries for it, a bottle of water, band-aids ("She tripped and scraped her knee last year," Sheryl said), his copy of _The Catcher in the Rye_ to show to people who ask who they're supposed to be, and out of habit, his notepad and pen.

He asked if she was ready to go home, but Olive shook her head. "Let's go by just a few more houses." She suddenly moved closer to Dwayne and slipped her hand into his, something that she hadn't done all night. "Grandpa would've wanted me to. He would've said, 'Go trick-or-treating for as long as you can, Olive. Get all that free candy while you're still young.'"

Dwayne smirked. "Yeah, and he would've wanted you to eat it all at once and rot your teeth. He would've said, 'Land your parents with a big dentist bill, Olive!''" They both laughed, and after their laughter faded away down the dark street, Dwayne muttered, "I miss that crazy old dude."

"Me, too," Olive whispered. Her voice shook, and her hand squeezed his, very tightly.

They walked a few more feet, and then to cheer her up, he said, "Hey, maybe next year, you'll be old enough to go trick-or-treating by yourself."

Olive smiled at him. "Maybe... but it'd still be more fun if you came with me again."

 **FIN**


End file.
